Memory
by lilidelafield
Summary: Virgil Tracy was not always the powerhouse of International Rescue. Once, a long time ago, he was a very traumatized little boy. This story is loosely based on events outlined in chapter two of Campfire Confessions, although you do not need to have read it to understand or enjoy this. This is a very definite AU.


**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _This story was written some time ago and only now finished and proofread. This is definitely an __**AU**__. A completely different universe from that of my current stories_. _Those who are familiar with _Into the Light_ will come to understand why._

I take a deep breath, looking around at the faces smiling on me and start to speak.

"Someone who shall for now remain nameless, has asked me to talk about where and how I came to know Virgil Grissom Tracy, so here goes.

I remember the first time I saw him, was when he first came to my school. He was shorter than the other boys our age, with black hair sticking up all over the place. He was about six, like me. His mom brought him into the classroom and introduced the teacher to him. He looked really terrified, his right thumb in his mouth, his left-hand clutching tightly at his mom's coat as though he wouldn't let her go. Miss Armstrong was a kind lady and a nice teacher. She smiled at him and gave him a tiny wave. The boy waved back, and Miss Armstrong took his hand before he could jam his thumb back into his mouth and led him to the front of the class.

"Everyone!" she said, crouching low beside the boy. "I want you all to meet our new friend. This is his very, very first day at school, so you will all want to say hello and make him feel welcome. His name is Virgil. This lady is his mommy, Mrs. Tracy."

"Hello Virgil! Hello Mrs. Tracy!" we all chorused. Virgil's mom crouched beside him.

"Alright now sweetie, Miss Armstrong and all these boys and girls are going to look after you until I come back to get you, alright? I'll go and look after Gordy, and when I come back I'll bring him with me so that all your new friends can meet him. Okay?"

"'Kay." Virgil replied in a tiny voice around the thumb that was now firmly back in his mouth. "Bye mommy."

When his mom was gone, and the door was shut, the new boy Virgil promptly burst into tears. Mrs. Armstrong called me over and asked me to take Virgil to show him the aquarium. I nodded and took his hand. I led him to the back of the room, where our class had always kept the big aquarium, with its dozens of different multi-coloured tropical fish.

Virgil stopped crying and stared with his mouth open.

"Wow!" he said. I showed him my favourite fish, and he nodded eagerly.

"My mommy is gonna bring my little brother Gordon when she comes back. Can we show this to Gordy? He loves fish!"

I shrugged.

"We can ask the teacher. She's nice. I think she will say yes."

"What's your name?" he asked me.

"Helena. I have a little brother too, called John. He's one."

Virgil looked surprised.

"I've got a brother called John too, only he's bigger than me. He's eight."

"Bad luck. You have two brothers? It's bad enough just having one!"

He frowned at me.

"You don't like your baby brother? I've got three brothers, and soon I'm gonna have another one. I think it's nice having lots of brothers. I've always got someone to play with. Gordy is lots of fun, and Scott and John look after me."

"Four brothers?" I was shocked. At the age of six, I was not enamored of my baby brother. He had come along and taken all of my mom's attention away from me, and it had seemed that every time mom sat down to talk to me, the baby started screeching to take her away again. I tried to explain this to my new friend and he nodded.

"I know. My biggest brother Scott is ten. He has three little brothers, and when baby Alan is born, he will have four of us to take mommy's attention away. But mom always says that having more children only means there is even more love to go around. It just takes a little bit longer to share it round."

That made me shut up and think for a bit.

Later that first day, I got to meet Virgil's younger brother Gordon. He was four years old, blond and really cute, and not even the tiniest bit scared or shy like his older brother Virgil. He stood right up close to the aquarium with his nose flattened against the glass, staring at our school fish with big wide eyes. I looked across at Virgil who was giggling at me.

"I told you Gordon loves fish!" he whispered to me. "If we stay here much longer, he'll be telling us about them all."

"He knows them all?"

Mrs. Tracy smiled at me.

"Oh yes. Gordon has his own aquarium at home. Not as big or pretty as this one, but Gordon won't even eat his own breakfast until he's said hello to every one of his fish!"

My mother took my hand then, and I said goodbye to my new friend and his mom and brother.

Over the next few weeks, Virgil and I became fast friends. He quickly settled into the class. It turned out that his two older brothers were in our school, in the higher classes. I knew them by sight. I remember I sometimes watched from afar as Virgil ran up to his brothers at playtimes, and I saw how they always welcomed him with smiles and hugs. When the school bullies tried to bully Virgil and me, Scott and John were the first ones to arrive and rescue us, making the bullies back off.

Virgil introduced me to them as his best friend. That made me really happy, and they smiled at me and said hello. I decided that I wanted my little brother to love me the way Virgil loved his two big brothers.

My younger brother John and I are still close, even now, years later. Thanks to Virgil and his two older brothers, Scott and John.

I soon learned about my new friend Virgil Tracy. He was curious about things. When playtime came in class and we were allowed to choose a toy to play with, rather than play with it, Virgil would take it apart. He said it was to see how it went together and to see if he could put it back together again. Usually he put it back together really well. There were a few times when dinner time or home time came, and we were told to put our toys away and put our coats on. Then there would be an outrage from some of the other kids the next day when they found the toy in pieces.

At first it made Virgil unpopular with the kids until they realized he was actually really good at fixing them. He became the one all the kids in class would go to whenever a toy got broken. Virgil the fixer-boy.

It was maybe a few weeks later, at the start of the school holidays, that Virgil said goodbye to me after class. He told me his family were going on holiday for two weeks in the snow. He was really excited. He had never been skiing before. Neither had I. I was excited for him and made him promise to tell me about everything he did on his holiday.

It was a very different Virgil who came back to class, about a month after school started again.

His mom, that pretty, smiling Mrs. Tracy had died whilst they were on holiday, and his big brother John had almost died and been badly hurt.

This time it was his biggest brother Scott who brought him into class and collected him afterwards. Virgil spent the entire day sitting in his seat, staring into his hands, without looking up or answering anybody when they tried to talk to him. I found that I was answering people for him.

It was a few days before my friend started to talk to me again. He told me that his mommy had died, but that the doctors had saved her little baby, and that little baby Alan was at home, being taken care of partly by their grandma, and partly by Scott. When I had asked Virgil about his dad, he had shrugged.

All of us had heard of Virgil Tracy's famous astronaut father. We were sad when Virgil told us that his dad had had to give up being an astronaut and start his own business. He never seemed to want to talk about his home anymore, so I quickly learned not to ask him any questions.

For a few weeks Virgil tried hard to be the same person he was before his ski trip, but everything he did and everything he enjoyed doing most reminded him of his mom, and I hated to see him so sad all the time. I helped him as best I could until one day, he told me he had something to tell me. His eyes, as usual these days, were sad.

"We're moving house." He told me. "Dad is finding hard looking after four of us and baby Alan and trying to go to work every day, so he is going to rent out our house to someone else and we're going to move in with grandma and grandpa."

I was surprised. Move in with his grandma?

"I thought you said she lived on a ranch in the middle of nowhere. That would be worse, right?"

He shook his head.

"No, that's my nana, my m…m…mom's mom. Grandma and grandpa Tracy live on a farm, and there's loads of room there. Dad will be able to work, and grandma and grandpa will…I'm gonna miss you."

I felt a lump in my throat. Virgil Tracy was my very first best friend. He was the one I told all my secrets to, the one who sat and listened to my recitation and helped me learn it, and the one who made going to school fun. What would I do with him gone?

"I wish you weren't moving. I'll miss you too."

I thought about how hard this had to be for him. All the things in his life that had changed and were going to change all because he had lost his mom. It wasn't fair. Virgil was one of the nicest boys in school. He didn't deserve to lose his mom and his house and his school and his best friend all one after the other. Why was that fair?

I turned away and rubbed my eyes and he gave me a hug from behind.

"Helena, you will always be my very bestest friend in the world. I'll write you a letter. I'll get my big brother Scott to help me and I'll paint you a picture and put it in with the letter. I'll paint a picture to show you what the farm looks like and tell you about my new school."

I nodded tearfully.

"You promise? Pinkie promise?"

We linked our pinkie fingers, and he promised me very faithfully. That was his last day at my school. It was a long time before I saw him again.

I waited for his letter, and after three weeks, it came, written in Scott Tracy's scrawly writing. It was Scott who wrote the letter, but they were definitely Virgil's words. He told me about the farmhouse, how Scott and John were sharing a room, and he and Gordon were sharing a room, and how untidy Gordon was. He told me all about how noisy the baby was at night, and how sad he was that baby Alan was never going to have the chance to know his mom. He told me about his new school, and he had made some new friends there and he wished I could come so that they could all meet me.

I wrote back, with my mom's help, and told him about our class, and the pet fish, and our class projects, and how Billy Niger fell over on the way back to class at lunchtime and landed in thick mud, and came into the classroom and al we could see of him through the black mum was his white eyes. I described how Miss Armstrong had to take him down to the school nurse to get him cleaned up and given something clean and dry to change into. All she had was a pair of pink gym shorts and a red jumper that someone had lost, and poor Billy was teased for the rest of the day.

It was a year before I got another letter. I had written several times and wondered why my best friend was ignoring me. Then my mom got a letter from Virgil's dad, and although mom wouldn't read it to me, she told me that the reason I hadn't got a letter from Virgil was because he was sick.

She told me that Virgil had been in an accident with his grandpa, where their truck had swerved to avoid a smaller car that pulled out, and came off the road and rolled down a hill. Virgil's grandpa was killed in the accident, and Virgil was in shock. Mom explained that Virgil had been so scared and traumatized by what happened, that he had stopped talking. She said that it was been about ten months since the accident, and Mister Tracy and his family had still not been able to get Virgil to say a single word. They had arranged for a special doctor to visit him at home to help him feel less scared, but he was still silent, and scared of death, and being alone.

Mister Tracy asked my mom if I could be brought along for a short visit. If nothing else, seeing me might help to cheer up my best friend.

I was crying at the thought of what had happened, but scared that I might make things worse. In the end, I said I wanted to visit, so one Friday during the summer holiday, Mister Tracy and his eldest son Scott came to our house to pick me up. I was to come for the weekend, and Mister Tracy would bring me home on the Monday on his way back to his New York office.

I don't really want to talk about that weekend. The Tracy family were all really nice to me, and Virgil welcomed me with a big hug and a tiny smile, but he still never said a word. He would nod or shake his head when I asked him questions, but it looked like he didn't even _try_ to talk. When I asked him if he had forgotten how to talk, he just shrugged. I asked him to please just say my name, even just with his mouth without saying it aloud, but he shook his head, gave me a push and ran away from me. John later found him hiding in a tree, crying.

Everyone was upset, and they all tried to tell me that it wasn't my fault. Virgil even hugged me later that night by way of apology, but he was still silent. Mister Tracy called Virgil's therapist…a child psychologist I was told she was called, and she came straight along to help.

After spending some time alone with Virgil, she came out and took me by the hand and led me to Mister Tracy and grandma. Sitting us down, she explained that Virgil was still very pleased to see me, but that he had a lot of fear and grief to try and deal with. She said that my being there was reminding him of everything he had lost, and it was making it harder for him to cope. She took both my hands and promised me that my friend would be alright in the end, but that it would just take some time.

Grandma hugged me as a cried, and Mister Tracy rubbed my back and told me how sorry he was to do this to me.

The next day he took me home and promised that when Virgil was feeling better, I could come back to visit again.

That was when I lost my first best friend."

I pause and I feel an arm snaking around my waist. My new husband giving me an encouraging squeeze. I look up again at our wedding guests.

"I was only seven back then, and I thought I had lost him for good. Our chance reunion when a twister chased me for three miles before tossing my car, with me still inside it, up into a tree still fills me with a mixture of delight and horror. I have never been more scared, and yet if that had not happened, Virgil and I would never had been reunited. What kind of world is it that I have a twister to thank for not ending up as an old maid?"

I look down, and Virgil stands up beside me, takes me into his arms and kisses me deeply. He is so handsome…_dishy_ my mom keeps saying. We part regretfully to the whistles and catcalls of our guests and Virgil caresses my cheek with his thumb.

"Thank you for being my best friend Mrs. Tracy." He said softly. I hug him, almost in tears that we have found each other again. The real Virgil. The one the world lost after the death of his mother is here and looking into my eyes.

"Forever." I whisper.


End file.
